Oetgen, Jerome. An American Abbot. Washington, DC: Catholic UP, 1997. 470 pp. $39.95. ISBN 0- 8132-0893-9.
The figure of Boniface Wimmer straddles the history of American Benedictines like a colossus, a primordial force in shaping the vision and founding generations of Benedictine communities in North America. It was not until 1976, however, that the first biography of Wimmer appeared, Jerome Oetgen's An American Abbot. It was a work whose readability and historical scholarship were equal in stature to its subject. Now, more than two decades after the biography was first published, Oetgen has written a revised and expanded version of that work. It has built upon the parallel developments in American Benedictine historical studies that have emerged in the ensuing years, used additional historical source material and reevaluated some of the original assessments contained in the 1976 version. The result is a book expanded a third in length from the original and one that should continue to serve as a standard of scholarship and writing for some years to come.
One of the evident advantages of Oetgen's portrait of Wimmer is that it is depicted within the broader historical backdrop of other nineteenth-century monastic movements and the American Catholic Church. He also resists the tendency to make Wimmer a monochromatic individual, something the mythmakers of Benedictine history are easily prone to do. That Wimmer could be authoritarian, impulsive and driven is true, but Oetgen paints a picture of Wimmer that also includes a man willing to admit mistakes, someone showing pastoral solicitude for those entrusted to his care (especially the poor and underprivileged), and displaying a remarkable resiliency and faith in the face of personal road-blocks and human weakness.
Oetgen is especially adept at providing a balanced perspective on such controverted questions as the relation between Wimmer and American Benedictine women. While he notes the unjust manner in which Wimmer manipulated money intended for the sisters and could be overly controlling of their lives, he also points out how the abbot did his best to serve as spokesman for the rights of monastic women, give public credit to their essential role in his monastic enterprise, and in his later years become a principal agent in raising funds for them. Oetgen recounts in detail how that enterprise came into being, illustrating the formidable obstacles and hardships it encountered as well as the successive steps of its achievement, from the German abbey of Metten to the network of monastic communities established in North America.
One is left with a renewed appreciation of the timeliness of Wimmer's vision and the singular vigor in which he carried it out. The historian John Tracy Ellis' evaluation of Wimmer as "the greatest Catholic missionary in nineteenth-century America" is affirmed when Oetgen presents the reader with the intrepid itinerary of Wimmer's monastic foundations and his impact on the Catholic Church of his day. Not only was he present at the creation as founder of the first community of Benedictines in North America (1846), he was present at the Second and Third Plenary Councils of Baltimore (1866 and 1884) and the First Vatican Council in Rome (1869- 70). He was presider over eight general chapters of the American-Cassinese Congregation, a counselor to bishops and abbots, a pathfinder in promoting the evangelization of the Church in the American West and South, and a prophetic voice in providing care for Africans and Native Americans as well as immigrants.
Oetgen is able to weave into his story the extraordinary elements of leadership and visionary genius that were Wimmer's legacy. His capacity for organization and administration lived on in the pliant infrastructure of his many monastic foundations. His visionary viewpoint was affirmed in such ideas as the establishment of a house of studies in Rome and broader cooperation within a confederation of Benedictine congregations throughout the world. His model of leadership was passed on through successive generations of abbots and bishops who were formed at St. Vincent. Without subscribing to the "great man" theory of history, Jerome Oetgen has produced a definitive study of the one person in American Benedictine history who shaped Benedictine identity in this country more than any other. He describes how Wimmer achieved this despite a series of internal revolts by his own monks against his activist model of monastic life and ongoing criticism of his single-minded and impulsive decisions.
Like so many of his contemporaries in the last century, Wimmer left a formidable deposit of correspondence. Oetgen's firsthand familiarity with this source material and with the significant players in the world of Boniface Wimmer make for a compelling glimpse at a formative era that forever shaped American Benedictine life. One can only hope that it will whet the appetite for another generation of monastics to study the pioneer legacy of the patriarch of monasticism in North America and stimulate similar scholarly studies of noteworthy American Benedictines.
Joel Rippinger, OSB
Marmion Abbey
Aurora, IL
BRIEF REVIEWS
The American-Cassinese Congregation of Benedictine monks has compiled a short book on its practices for abbatial elections which may be of interest to other monastics. The Guide for Abbatial Elections, revised in 1995, contains not only the specifics of the constitutions and outlines for preparation and election processes, but also substantial appendices which list canonical sources, contemporary bibliography, liturgical resources and copies of the various memos and documents used in the process, and a lengthy index of subject matter. More information is available from:
Office of the Congregation President
Newark Abbey
520 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.
Newark, NJ 07102
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It seems that no person of faith could fail to be moved by the story of the Cistercian monks martyred in Algeria. The chronicle of their final three years is absorbing and inspiring. How Far to Follow? The Martyrs of Atlas, is compiled by their abbot general, Bernardo Olivera, OCSO (Petersham, MA: St. Bede's Publications, 1997, 136 pp., $9.95, ISBN 1-879007-24-X). He includes their correspondence, his own experience of the events and other pertinent documents. The reader travels into the monastery and lives the perilous existence of those under the threat of violent extremists. The words of the victims as they prepared for what they knew might come at any time are a testament of holiness and fidelity. Such a book, short but overflowing in spiritual richness, is worth far more than its meager price as a reminder of the bravery and forgiveness that can come from the love of God.
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Cistercian Publications has another in its series of Carthusian resources, Interior Prayer: Carthusian Novice Conferences, by a Carthusian, trans. Maureen Scrine (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1996, 181 pp., $14.95, ISBN 0-87907-764-6). This is an unusual book in that it places the reader at the novice conferences themselves. It is not merely a copy of the talks given, but includes diagrams, outlines of points, and even some of the assigned written reflections of the novices themselves. It identifies some of the general concepts and techniques of prayer, but focuses primarily on the many dimensions of prayer in Scripture. In it, one follows the introduction and evolution of the notion of prayer as novices come to encounter it in their own growing experience of the monastic life. It is thus both academically useful and concretely addressed to real life experiences of everything from simple petition to extraordinary mystical phenomena.
Another book on prayer which appeared at the end of last year is The Contemplative Path: Reflections on Recovering a Lost Tradition, ed. C. Rozanne Elder (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1995, 129 pp., $14.95, ISBN 0-87907-547-3). Dr. Elder has gathered six diverse articles on the history and practice of contemplative prayer forms from a variety of traditions and points of view. Each basic overview is followed by a general bibliography to direct the reader further into each tradition. This book will be of value to the person who is searching for their own way of enhancing prayer and those who are looking for texts for an introductory study of contemplative prayer for students or spiritual directees.